The Dogs Are Barking
They break the morning––a daily rite.
It’s just a warning. The dogs won’t bite.
Two strangers talk but pass unseen.
I doze, they walk, with a wall between.
I lie here posed between thought and sleep.
My eyes still closed. I’m swimming deep.
I resist the trip––that journey up––
preferring to sip from the dreaming cup
whose liquid darker and bitter thick
reveals a starker bailiwick
than schedules, crafts, menus, schemes.
Much finer draughts we quaff in dreams.
I try to sink back into sleep,
once more to drink of waters deep;
but the dogs still bark. They leap and pace.
My dreams too dark for this morning place.
Those dreams lie deep and intertwined,
wanting to creep back up my mind.
But its slippery slope is much inclined
and provides small hope that I will find
again, that world well out of sight
where truth lies curled, still holding tight––
as oysters cleave and then unfurl
with mighty heave, the priceless pearl
of that other mind that slips the knife
beneath the rind of our daily life.
Time is a brew of present, past
and future, too—whatever’s cast
to stew and steep the story rare
that’s buried deep in dreams laid bare.
Dreams are stories we tell ourselves
that draw our quarries to bookstore shelves.
Pinned to the page, they reach their height
and bring our sage self to the light.
But the dogs are barking. They’re hungry, cross.
When I rise to feed them, the poem is lost.
Uncaught, dismembered, it blows away.
Like petals, scattered in the light of day.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
That expresses perfectly the sense of the ephemeral nature of dreaming. I don’t know if you have the same expression, but around here, if you say ‘the dogs are barking’ it means you have tired, sore feet. 🙂
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I really appreciate that you brought this precious poem up to the surface to been seen again in daylight. I wish I could make poems too, but as a flipping foreigner I aim at just being better in plain English!
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You seem to be doing really well, Maria. I can’t imagine what poems or essays I wrote in Spanish would sound like! Judy
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I am Danish, and it is said that it is very difficult for foreigners
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Probably from running after the dogs! Ha. Just saw your comment again as it showed up in my comments thingamajiggy when someone else commented on this poem.
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And, actually, I do!!!! (have sore feet, that is.)
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Reblogged this on lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown.
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This is wonderful. I loved it.
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